A Swarm Intelligence Responds to the Paris Climate Summit

For the past two weeks, Political leaders from across the globe met in tiny Le Bourget, France, just outside Paris. The goal of this historic summit has been to negotiate a sweeping agreement on climate change that every nation would sign and implement by the year 2020. The published vision was a commitment from all nations to limit global warming by the year 2100 to a 2 degrees Celsius rise over pre-Industrial levels.

Because climate change is such an important – and divisive – topic, researchers at Unanimous AI targeted the Paris Summit as an opportunity to gauge American confidence in their leaders’ ability to achieve meaningful change.

The researchers used a Collective Intelligence platform called UNU that allows online groups to express opinions as a “human swarms.” For this study, the “swarms” were comprised of 55 randomly drawn Americans of voting age representing 21 states. 79% of respondents attended college, and 10% hold a graduate degree.

The results produced by the swarms offer compelling insights into what Americans believe will reverse climate change, and who should take responsibility for enacting those changes. In the replay below, you can see the swarm responding to the question, “Will advances in technology save us from the worst of climate change?” With each magnet representing an individual user, UNU allows a group of 55 people to speak with one voice and find consensus in just seconds.

Because of the Paris summit’s emphasis on collective, global responsibility for addressing climate change, the researchers asked the swarm which types of nations should be most responsible for enacting change.

As you can see, the Swarm echoed the summit’s mission to get all nations involved in preventing climate change. While this would seem to be an endorsement of the summit itself, the researchers’ final question revealed one last insight that speaks volumes about addressing such a massive global issue. When asked whether the Paris summit would engender meaningful consequences, the swarm had this to say:

Research into human swarms is an emerging field, and it’s important to note that each Swarm will hold distinct and unique opinions depending on its members. But these results make clear that – for this swarm at least – when it comes to an issue as potentially earth-changing as climate change, we’re all in this together. And, at some point, our leaders have to do more than just talk.

Want to try swarming? Now you can. Swarms are forming on topics of every kind, from Sports and Politics to Star Wars and Star Craft. Just fill out the form below to become a BETA TESTER. It’s free and fast and completely anonymous…